| Original | Traced | Derived from the Two |
|---|---|---|
 |  |  |
When I say like an artist, I meant it as the tracer creating an output that mimics what could have been drawing from a corporeal subject. There’s a difference between a person that creates art and traces art. An artist can be a tracer while a tracer can either be an artist or just someone technically good at making duplicates. I made a post before about traced content and its valuation on Hive.
I knew about the Augmented Reality apps back when was surveying the art ecosystem here. Once I learned the trick, the magic of the content just disappeared. To me, it’s no different than painting by colors but more sophisticated. Perhaps you already stumbled about those kinds of content here. It’s hard not to miss once you’ve been around with the art community long enough. I’m not going to put any specific links but would leave it to your imagination.
AR apps like these are great training wheels for people who really want to learn how it’s done. I can see some other practical uses like creating your own 3D models then have it screen projected as the video demonstrates. But for the most part, this tech has only been used to churn out factory type of content, take an image and copy it to the best of your abilities. Hours worth of work trying to examine depth, volume, how light reveals shape on an image can be reduced to minutes with gross strokes and covering with artistic flares.
I don’t think this is even art as it’s no different than mimicking what a printer can do. Tracing is an art skill, one of the many tools available to the artist to learn and render their art to life. But if it’s the bulk of an artist’s skill set, shouldn’t it be better to just refer to the craft as tracing. AR apps as a means of producing content is just sophisticated tracing. Is it wrong? No, to each their own if they want to value content like that.
I see AR apps like these as tools to help people have some confidence boost and supplement their art journey. But having this as the only tool an artist could show is just tragedy and waster of potential. Instead of exploring more ways to come out of those frames to produce a finite output, the artist inhibits their growth by sticking to what works in the comfort zone.
I tried the damn app to get a feel for what I’m talking about. The first half hour fixing the stand and negotiating with the image just led me to frustration. I knew I’m “making art” when I can follow the forms and accurately shade the parts. No shred of doubt that I’m going to successfully copy the image used but stopped midway. There’s just no satisfaction in tracing because I’m way past that comfort zone. Sure my images don’t exactly obey the laws of human anatomy but these are choices made to learn as I go along my journey.
TL:DR use the app if you’re a beginner but if you keep using it long without learning the fundamentals, you’re only fooling yourself. It’s just tracing.
This is a link to our Discord Group.